


Minutes Of Their Skin

by 13Kat13



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Destiel - Freeform, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Sexual Content, Supernatural - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 08:48:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6188008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13Kat13/pseuds/13Kat13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘My dearest Dean,’ was written in Castiel’s delicate hand. He was here. His calm warmth breathed his love into every word.<br/>‘You looked up from under that barley husk hair, and I discovered I could breathe.'</p><p>England, 1912. Two boys unravel in a society that doesn't accept their secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Minutes Of Their Skin

Arabella

 

I was there the day Castiel and Dean died. It was the same week that the Titanic sunk. Hundreds of souls cried out, but I heard theirs shatter.

I’d watched Dean for a long time by then, and I saw what no one else did. Glances that lasted a beat too long. Threadbare sighs that buckled the soul. Touches that burnt the heart as much as the skin.

Trying to bring Dean back led me to his diary. I stood before his writing desk, clutching the thick leather-bound book. He’d been scribbling in it for years, ink stains permanently on his fingers.

Torn between the need to fix the man I loved and the intrusion into his midnight secrets made me hesitate. Adrenaline made my hands tremble.

He was downstairs; I could picture him sat in the window seat gazing out into the garden. The rolling hills that he had once so admired left unseen. My breath hitched, and I opened Dean’s diary.

Tucked away between the cover and the first page were little squares of folded paper. I opened one and found a letter from Castiel. I nearly dropped it.

‘My dearest Dean,’ was written in Castiel’s delicate hand. He was here. His calm warmth breathed his love into every word.

'You looked up from under that barley husk hair, and I discovered I could breathe.

When my parents first told me, I resented you. At twelve years old, I didn’t want a strange boy following me around, especially one who was two years my junior. But you, an orphan who had been left in the care of my parents, were coming to live with us. Here, in our house. And I didn’t have any say in the matter.

“Won’t it be nice to have a brother, Castiel?” My Mother said cheerfully, strutting around the drawing room as I tried to read. So pleased with herself, so full of her own self-worth and charitable nature.

“He’s not my brother.”

But then you came. Overseas from the colonies of America you travelled to our British country manor. I discovered I could see because your stained glass irises met mine, and knew I would worship them more than any church window. I discovered I could hear because the murmur of your voice reached my ears, your strange accent striking the air between us. I discovered I could dream because I imagined taking your hands and folding them into my own, removing your gloves so that our skin could melt together.

But I wouldn’t take your hand. Mother apologized to your guardians, who just laughed and said I was a shy little thing. But the smooth skin of your forehead crumpled above questioning eyes. I had the sudden urge to blurt out an apology. But I stood silent. My mother’s ornamental doll; dressed up in silk and starched linen, scrubbed of the usual paint stains and dowsed in strange perfume.

You helped me discover I was alive, and that would be my death.

I used to wonder if I was just damned. That it didn’t matter what I did, I would still go to hell. Because I couldn’t stop loving you, no matter how hard I tried. Believe me, Dean, I tried. I spent hours in the church, praying not only for my soul but for yours too. I know you love me too, but I can’t bear the thought of you burning for the rest of eternity. The purple is the only way to save you. I can’t live without you Dean, but I won’t condemn you either.’

 

 

I didn’t realise I was crying until a teardrop fell onto the letter. It ran through Castiel’s writing, becoming tinted with blue as it took his words with it. I hastily tried to blot the stain away. Folding the letter back into a little square I listened for any movement from below. I dreaded the approach of Dean as much as I yearned for it. What would he say if he found out I knew?

Maybe it would make it easier to have someone to talk to. Maybe he’d never talk to me again.

With the letter tucked safely where it belonged, I placed the diary back on the desk. I turned and strode towards the door, but only made it a few paces. I needed him to come back to me. To shake off his vacant stare into the past and see me in the present. I returned with careful steps and flicked through his diary, past Castiel’s letters to Dean’s messy scrawl, pausing when I read my own name.

 

 

_4 th of March 1912_

Cas brought up Arabella again today. We were tucked away in our favourite window seat, the curtains drawn so I could lay my head in his lap.

“She’ll be good for you, Dean,” he murmured, stroking my hair.

I sat up and turned to face him. His hand remained suspended in mid air where my head had just been, before it dropped into his lap. A puppet with his string cut. My face felt hot as my vision blurred with tears. He repeatedly smoothed his trousers, watching his hands slick over the cotton as though it was suddenly the most fascinating thing in the world. I felt my jaw tighten and my chin jut out. I reached over and caught his wrist, holding it still.

“I don’t want her. I only want you, Cas.” The resolution in my voice made him look up, but not at me. He stared through the glass towards the lake. The sunlight on its surface winked back at him.

I felt ill as my eyes traced the taught line of his mouth. I kissed one downturned corner in the hope of bringing him back. His body seemed to hold itself together for a moment, hesitating. Then he melted against me, molten on my tongue.           

Cas’ parents had been thrilled when Arabella first showed an interest in me. She’s rich. Maybe I owe it to them to marry her. She’s all right I suppose. And the same age as me, so better than some of the ones they’ve presented me to. But she’s not Cas. And I owe him more than I do his parents. He deserves all of me.'

 

 

I gripped the edge of the desk. I couldn’t carry on reading this entry. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to regulate my breathing. Then shakily started turning the pages. Forward in time to find when Dean started looking back. After the sixteenth of April, there was a deathly silence for over two months. But then Dean started to pour out his memories of Castiel, as though he was worried he’d lose them. That they’d be drowned out by new ones, sink into darkness. The diary clung to them. Clawed them back from the bottom of the lake, dug them out of the graveyard. The writing became confused, switching from third person to second, as though Dean wasn’t sure who he was addressing anymore. Snatches of half memories, unfinished, no dates. The first coherent entry was marked ‘ _4/8/1912_ ’, written as though in reply to Castiel’s letters. Groping blindly for him.

 

 

‘When you were thirteen and I was hopelessly trying to catch up at eleven, you painted a landscape. The colours were so vivid, I could see their pulse. Your parents were so proud that your mother hung it up in her closet, pouring praise on you. You were golden. Jealousy made me drag a chair under that painting and rip it down. Made me take it out of its simple little frame and tear it into the confetti of your talent. You walked in on me crying as I tried to piece it back together. After a moment’s silence you crouched down next to me.

“Don’t worry, Dean, I’ll paint you another one.”

As if it had always been for me. But of course, everything was for me. Our young minds just couldn’t quite grasp that yet.

I’ve accepted that the purple was always there. You tried to tell me, I just didn’t listen. There were whispers of it between the folds of heavy bed sheets, but I just kissed you to shut you up. It was easier like that. Safer.

The purple was there on that first night. Not the first night we spent in the same bed, we’d been sneaking into each other’s rooms for years, but the first of sin. At least that’s what you called it. I called it the first of life.

When you came to my room, I could tell something was different. Your eyes were feral. Hungry. But there was a melancholy in them like that of a caged beast. I wasn’t scared. I knew that look. I’d seen it in your eyes when we swam in the lake, stripped down to our underclothes, beads of water rolling off our skin. I’d seen it when I got too close, entangled my body in yours in playful fights, faking naivety. I did it to get close to you. But you always walked away. Not that night.

You hitched up your pyjama pants and crawled onto the bed. I kneeled patiently until you’d settled yourself opposite me, knees touching mine. You would have described the sensation I felt tingling across my skin in some beautifully poetic way. All I can describe it as is _throbbing_ , a lurid, crude and distasteful word. It was so much more _sacred_ than that. What we had was sacred. I wish you could have accepted that.

“I’m tired, Dean,” you sighed. Your fingers wove themselves into the tassels edging my heavy throw.

“Well it is late. Why don’t we sleep?” I knew what you were getting at, but I didn’t want to push you.

“No.” You looked up from the throw and straight at me, into me. “I’m tired of fighting this.”

Breath eluded me. Balance decided it was going to make an exit too, and I wobbled, clumsily lowering myself onto my side. Your hand twitched. Torn between supporting me and restraining yourself. You’d been doing both for so long.

You covered your face with your hands.

“I’m so sorry,” you moaned, your dark hair flopping over your forehead as you shook from sobs. I wanted to tangle my hands in it. “I’m meant to protect you… I’m meant to make sure – make sure you will go to heaven.”

“Cas,” I pulled one of your hands away from your face, shaking it to get your attention. “Cas.” You turned away so I could only see your clenched jaw.

I clambered towards you. I placed a light kiss on your taught neck, more breath than lips. Your heaving chest froze for a moment, a gasp caught in your throat. You finally looked at me. Blood bloomed in little flowers over your wet cheeks; eyes and mouth round in surprise. I smiled at your startled expression, and leant in close.

“If we’re already damned…” I whispered against your lips.

And you sunk with me, tumbled off the edge into that ocean of bliss. My hands found their way to your hair as I clambered to straddle you, your arms snaked around my waist to pull me close. Your lips were soft and wet with tears, your cheeks hot and breath uneven.

I imprinted kisses down your jaw, your neck, marking what was mine as you sighed my name, caught in the exquisite ecstasy.

We tumbled back onto the bed and you fumbled at the buttons of my pyjama shirt, your brow drawn in worried concentration. I caught your hand and you looked up into my eyes, the depths of your love singing from those blue pools. I slowly unbuttoned my shirt, watching your eyes follow my fingers. And you met my bare skin with your lips, ran your tongue over my chest, tasting your sin, drowning in it.

Your breath ghosted over my hardness, teasing it through the fabric. And when you worked my pants down and took me into your mouth I knew heaven, in that cruel way the sinner is allowed to glimpse it before being pulled into damnation. But all the salvation I needed was in you, your mouth draped in divine glory as you sucked along my length, made me gasp, made me plead.

I begged until you finally came back up and kissed me, let me drag your shirt over your head, work your pants down, grip your hardness. You moaned, and you looked so perfect above me; bathed in the golden light of my little lamp, rosy lips parted slightly and eyes scrunched shut.

“Be one with me, Cas,” I whispered, and your eyes flew open, panic flirting on their surface.

“Dean…” And I could hear every inch of pain in your voice. Could hear the longing and suffering and somewhere deep down I could hear the purple too.

I stretched up and kissed your swollen lips, felt you dissolve into your desire. And then you were spitting on your hand, slicking it over your length before resting your tip against my entrance.

“I love you,” you breathed, your eyes swimming with the words that fell from your mouth.

“I love you too, Cas,” I whispered. “Forever.”

And then you were inside me, and I was clenching my teeth, gripping your shoulders as my heels dug into your back. You panicked for a moment, worried you were hurting me, but I hushed you with kisses, and with cautious rolls of my hips encouraged you to move. Our bodies found a slow, steady rhythm, and oh if I wasn’t lost then. Wasn’t suffocating in my own beautiful transgression.

You were tender, my name repeatedly tumbling from your lips as you thrust into me. Our bodies were pushed together and your lips ghosted over my neck. And I loved the weight of you on top of me, could feel the heat of you against me, inside me.

At some point I turned over and you were behind me, your chest pushed against my back, skin flushed and warm. I gripped the headboard as you took my length into your hand, made me bite my lip, groan out as you nipped at my shoulder.

And you went deep, our rhythm speeding and my sanity cracking as you slid up against something so outrageously good inside me. And there were colours, and lights, and waves crashing, and heat growing, and hands gripping, and I was gasping, and you were moaning, and our bodies were shaking, and you were with me, and oh how I loved you, and oh how I will

always

love you.

And I came undone. Shattered into perfect pieces as I strangled a cry, climaxing in delicious rolls of pleasure. I felt you reach oblivion inside me, and you choked out my name, gripped my hips as your own jerked and fell out of rhythm.

We fell against the sheets, entangled in each other’s flushed bodies. I pushed the pillow I’d ruined off the bed and you laughed. It was the most beautiful sound and I swam in it, let it fool me into hoping.

It happened again and again, almost every night. I watched as the pain of it tore you open. And I couldn’t kiss it away, couldn’t make it better. I tried to shout over it, to drown it out with my love.

But it was love that let the purple in. And it was love that took you from me.’

 

 

A sharp intake of breath from the doorway jerked me out of the world of the diary. I span around to see Dean, hand on his chest and face full of horror as he stared at the diary in my hands.

Dead silence. Frozen in freefall.

“What is the purple?” My quiet question snapped Dean’s gaze from the diary to me.

His hands curled into fists. Shoulders taught with tension. I felt a mixture of alarm and elation as his eyes regained that look; that wildness Castiel’s mother had never fully been able to tame. Not until her son died.

“What do you think it is, Arabella?” he spat. “It’s suicide.”

Dean marched over to me, nearly tripping as he snatched the diary off me. His eyes were fire and pain. I gently caught his arm. His grimace faltered when he looked up at me.

“I’ve always known,” I whispered.

His lips parted in surprise, eyes searching mine for some form of disgust, or rejection. When he found none, his tension seemed to unfurl. A flower opening itself to the morning rays. Dean straightened and released a gentle sigh as he looked down at the diary. The silence seeped into us and his shoulders sagged.

Then he handed the book back to me, briefly grasping my hand as he did. We stared at each other for a long moment, before he turned and walked out of the room.

I released the breath I’d been holding, shaky like the scratch of autumn leaves across the cobblestones. Dean had taken the warmth out of the room when he left, but had given me something else when he looked up at me.

He’d given me hope.


End file.
